Reader comments on "SuperMemo — software to build your English fast"

5 words a day = 2,000 after a year?

Marta Sokolowska writes:
I just want to quote one of the professors of the Academy of Economics in Poznan (actually it won't be an exact quotation). According to him many people say that learning languages is too hard for them, In the same time these people agree that learning 5 words a day wouldn't be a problem for them. But they can't see that 5 words a day means almost 2000 a year. 2000 words is a lot , that would mean that I can combine these words in many ways and comunicate in the language. Knowing all that things they still claim that learning languages is too hard for them. Their problem is that they cannot go beyond 5 words and therefore they can't see 2000 words.

Tom's reply: If your professor meant to say "You can achieve great things through small steps", then I agree. Even a very small change in your lifestyle can give you powerful results after some time.

For example, when I was in high school, I was suffering from the "language barrier". I was afraid to speak in English. I would speak only if a teacher asked me a question. One day, I decided that, at every class, I would have a conversation with my teacher (an Irish girl) — using very simple language and without mistakes. That was a small change in my life. Instead of talking to my friends, I would have a nice conversation with a person from another country. No big thing.

But after two months, the "language barrier" was completely gone! I could now talk to anybody, native speaker or not. I could give a presentation in English. I was a fluent speaker.

Unfortunately, most people have very little influence on their lives. They cannot do even such small things as reading 5 pages out of an interesting book in English every day. So they never see any results.

However, I cannot agree with your professor if he means that learning 5 words a day would give you almost 2,000 after a year. It would be true without forgetting. In reality, you learn 50 words this week, and next week you forget them. That's why it's so difficult to build your vocabulary.

It's not hard to learn 5 new English words every day. The real challenge is keeping them in your memory!